Effect of a quality-improving cod end on size selectivity and catch patterns of cod in bottom trawl fishery

• Main Authors: Brinkhof, Jesse, Herrmann, Bent, Larsen, Roger B., Veiga-Malta, Tiago
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: NRC Research Press (a division of Canadian Science Publishing) 2019
• Subjects: Barents Sea; Gadus morhua
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/96204; http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/cjfas-2018-0402

A new cod-end concept developed and tested exhibited significantly improved quality of caught cod (Gadus morhua) compared with that of the conventional cod end used in the Barents Sea bottom trawl fishery. However, the design of the new quality-improving cod end raised concerns about its size selectivity and the possibility that higher retention probability could negatively impact the catch pattern by increasing the proportion of undersized cod. Therefore, the goal of this study was to quantify and compare the size selectivity and catch pattern for cod when deploying, respectively, the conventional and new quality-improving cod end in the Barents Sea bottom trawl fishery. The new quality-improving cod end had significantly lower relative size selectivity than the conventional cod end, but no significant difference in the catch patterns was detected in the trawl. Further, estimation of the total size selectivity in the trawl revealed that the increased retention of small cod when using the quality-improving cod end was minor. Hence, despite the reduced selectivity, the quality-improving cod end can be used with low risk of retaining small cod. The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author.